White paper into Victoria's emergency services management released

By ABC Statewide Drive

Deputy premier and head of Victoria's newest ministry Peter Ryan discusses his Government's white paper, foreshadowing a ten year process of restructuring of the management, communications and volunteerism that makes up Victoria's emergency management systems.

Described by Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu as a 'once in a generation opportunity to reform emergency management in this state', the State Government has issued a white paper signalling major reforms of emergency management and the creation of a new command structure.

Victoria's deputy Premier and leader of the National Party Peter Ryan, also currently Minister for Bushfire Response, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for Regional and Rural Development, will take on another ministerial role as part of the shake-up: that of Minister for Emergency Management .

"... the legislative change has to be made, but that will be done as one of our intiatives early next year, and the ministerial role will be police and emergency management," says Peter Ryan, interviewed by ABC Statewide Drive presenter Nicole Chvastek following the announcement.

The major change for the emergency services command structure will be the removal of the office of Fire Services Commissioner, currently held by Craig Lapsley, and the creation of a new commissioner's office.

"The role of the Fire Services Commissioner was created after the Royal Comission and all credit to the former government for doing it; and the Fire Services Commissioner, Craig Lapsley continues to do an absolutely wonderful job in his role, but his role will be rolled into that of the Emergency Services Commissioner..." he says.

Peter Ryan says while Craig Lapsley currently has responsibilty for both metropolitan and country fire services as well as the SES, a new role needs to be created to take in other eventualities.

"The other events that otherwise occur in Victoria, they fall outside his purview... if the [West Gate] bridge fell down tomorrow again over the river, it would not be Craig Lapsley appointed to that task. If we had another explosion at Longford, god forbid, as we did in '98, it would not be Craig Lapsley appointed to that task."

Creation of the new comissioner's office would also replace the Victorian Chief of Police as the over-arching head of any response to fire, flood or natural disaster.

"This new commissioner... would be the person running the whole show, whether it is fire or flood, as Craig Lapsley now accomodates, or whether it's any other form of problem, such as a pandemic, extraordinary heatwave, bridge coming down... whatever it might be... and he would appoint a state controller to be direcly in charge of the management of that particular event... but he would sit over the top of it and have management of the whole event."

Web and phone services also to be reformed

One of the critical failings of Victoria's emergency management during the Black Saturday fires was the collapse of the CFA fire warning website and the overwhelming of both the Bushfire Information hotline and the triple 0 emergency lines.

Despite the Fire Services Commissioner's office trialling a new emergency warning website capable of bringing together fire, flood, wind damage and road accident warnings, there is still no single website Victorians can consult to give them a complete picture of warnings from CFA, Victoria Police, VicRoads, SES and local councils.

The white paper indicates two major reforms to be undertaken to change the public's access of emergency information:

Develop a single emergency management web portal to provide information and advice to help people prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies

Develop a single all-hazards telephone hotline for the community to access information during emergencies

According to the white paper, "One all-hazards hotline number will be developed by combining the functions of the Victorian Bushfire Information Line, the VICSES Flood Storm and Information Line, the proposed

Police Assistance Line and the Department of Human Services relief and recovery lines."

In November 2011 the CFA released a free smartphone app allowing people to receive warnings directly to their phones, as well as offering a map-based geo-location capability to directly inform users of the location and severity of fires.

Figures provided to the ABC show there have been just 74,000 downloads of the app to Apple or Android devices in the 12 months since then, with over 50,000 downloads in the Melbourne metro area and downloads in regional centres such as Bendigo and Ballarat less than a tenth of the populations living there.

Testing by the ABC has shown warnings appear on the app up to 40 minutes faster than email and web based warnings issued.

Regional Victoria trialling new SMS and warning systems

Over the past months a new SMS warning system delivering warnings to mobile phones in specific areas has been tested in regional Victoria, including many of the areas such as affected by the Black Saturday fires.

The service is currently only available to Telstra customers, with an announcement in September this year by Optus and Vodaphone that they would offer the service by at least November 2013.

Residents of Licola in Gippsland, who have endured bushfires in 2006, the Black Saturday fires in 2009 as well as two major floods, tested the system in November and reported mixed results, with some in Licola receiving no warnings at all, while other folk living in nearby towns not targeted by the test receiving the SMS.

"We were about 6 kilometres north of Licola... we had three mobile phones here, and no signal's come through to us," Mark Coleman told ABC Gippsland the morning after the test, while other callers reported they had received text message.

For one resident in Macedon, another town with a recent history of major bushfire, the SMS alert system delivered similiarly patchy results but is better than nothing.

"At the time I had a number of guests around at my house, and it wasn't until after they had left I noticed the message had quietly appeared; I rang all my guests to ask if they had received the message too, and none of them had... one in five hit rate probably not ideal, but really, I think any warning system is of benefit," Amanda told ABC Cental Victoria the day after, stating that used in conjunction with the landline warning system it was much better than nothing.

Volunteer systems to receive scrutiny and restructure

The white paper also suggests a restructure of the recruitment and training of volunteers, with a clear statement addressing the complaints from locals over years about their knowledge about local conditions being ignored by agencies.

"It is vital that volunteer local knowledge and expertise is harnessed and respected as part of emergency management planning and response," the report says.

Both Premier Baillieu and deputy Premier Ryan say they are committed to the an expected 10 years of restructuring and rebuilding of new reporting lines and managementn frameworks.